Originally Posted by
francophile
It looks more like something got caught in the wheel as the person was riding or while the bike was rolling forward. Forward motion of the wheel and spokes would've carried whatever it was right into the fork and left a linear mark like that. I think it dented the right-hand (from our perspective) fork blade as well. Shocked it wouldn't have broken the spokes (or maybe it did?), but ...
Thanks for this interesting suggestion.
Had ruled out coldsetting/resetting as marks not correct for that.
Think this is a good idea.